Number one spot in Champions League might prove to be 'disadvantage' – Arne Slot

Liverpool head coach Arne Slot is unsure how much benefit there will be to finishing top of the Champions League table.

If his side make it seven wins out of seven at home to Lille tomorrow and Barcelona fail to win at Benfica, the Reds will have an unassailable position with one match still to play.

The obvious advantage is avoiding the play-off round, which they will do with a point from their final two matches, and going straight to the last 16.

But beyond that the new format means it is difficult to predict what other extras can be gained other than financial, with top spot earning £8.5million in addition to £1.6m for reaching the last 16 and bonuses for every game won in the group stage, as the likes of Manchester City, Paris St Germain and Real Madrid are all scrambling to make the 24-team cut-off just to get into the play-offs.

"With this new set-up you think that number one is the best position to end up with but because it's such a strange league table, for example if I look at PSG every week I think they have the hardest team to face so they are quite low on the table, which does not reflect their quality," said Slot.

"So maybe if you end up number one, you can face them. That’s a disadvantage so I’m not looking at a league table in a way, 'if we are number one we probably have the most easy team to face’, because that is impossible to say because of this weird, I don’t mean in a negative way, format.

"So being on top maybe doesn’t tell you that you’re the best team and being number 24 doesn’t tell you that you’re number 24 in terms of quality. It has a lot to do with the teams you’ve faced."

Slot goes into the game – and a number of fixtures afterwards – without striker Diogo Jota, who exacerbated a muscle problem at